Front End Developer

“I started off nearly 10 years ago as a front-end web developer and spent nearly 5 years exclusively working on front end projects. As I moved into back end development the time, I spent working on front end technologies diminished drastically for a couple of years. But as front-end technologies improved, I moved back into it and I currently use a range of front-end technologies and frameworks; Angular in particular.”

HTML User Interface Developer

The very first taste of front-end web development came for me back in college when I was doing my degree in Graphic design. I had a web design module where I learned the basics of building pages in HTML. I found it extremely easy to pick up and could quickly and rapidly build page layouts. I always found HTML a very structured and easy to navigate language where mistakes are easy to pick up and improvements are easy to make. These days HTML is second nature and I still enjoy coding front end layouts and interfaces in HTML.

HTML5

100+

Front End user interfaces coded

CSS Developer

When I first started using CSS things were much simpler. Complex animations were hard to do, flexible and responsive layouts were even worse, and cross browser compatibility was an absolute nightmare. These days CSS has evolved to make front end development much simpler. Responsive web design is the norm and when I see a website that still has a non-responsive layout it always makes me laugh, although if it was mine, I would cry. SASS & LESS have been two of the best improvements to CSS over the last few years allowing you to build much better structured CSS in re-usable components. It also makes animations and more complex layouts much easier to achieve. I have developed my own mini front-end CSS framework that I usually use across projects with mixins and default classes that makes creating flexible front-end layouts that are responsive and work across screen sizes a breeze.

CSS3

SASS

“HTML and CSS were great starting points for me and allowed me to learn the basics concepts behind web design and create basic user interfaces and websites”

Startup Bus - Europe 2016

During Startup Bus, a 7-day hackathon across 5 countries in Europe I had to rapidly build the front end for my team's project while travelling on a bus.

(SPA) Single Page Application Developer

I work with the most modern and powerful front-end frameworks including Angular, React, and Vue JS. For complex single page applications, I use Angular because of the huge amount of features it offers. As a front end developer for many years, I have built numerous single page applications with Angular including an SEO scanner and a learning management system (LMS). I have used versioned 4, 5, 6, and 7 and will continue to use future versions as Angular releases new versions rapidly every few months. I also use it for mobile application development through NativeScript. For smaller front-end single page applications that don't require a huge feature set I sometimes use Vue JS as it is lightweight and a more modern alternative to JQuery. I can use React if required as the component-based system is very similar to Angular and easy to use.

Angular

React

Vue

15+

Single page applications built

(AMP) Accelerated Mobile Pages Website Developer

I have built a number of AMP websites while working as a front end developer. As a new technology created by Google to speed up mobile browsing, it is a technology heavily focused towards front end performance which is something I am also heavily focused toward in all my work. AMP development restricts what you can use on a web page and it’s not suited to every type of website. But if you are looking to create a fast front end mobile experience for users that is focused on information delivery and content more than interaction, it’s a great choice.

AMP

5+

AMP websites built

(PWA) Progressive Web App Developer

Progressive web apps take web browsing to a whole new level. When we think of being online, we think of being connected to the internet. Progressive web apps can work offline and allow users to browse and interact with your site without an internet connection. PWA's functionality has become incredibly easy to integrate into the front end of a website and I have built a number of progressive web apps over the last couple of years.

5+

Progressive web apps built

Front End Build Tools

Automation has become a huge part of most processes for front end developers in modern times. Why spend hours doing something when you can create a program to do it for you in a few seconds. Although I have used various front-end build tools Gulp is the easiest to use and most powerful, I have found allowing you to combine, minify, and uglify JavaScript as well as compile your SCSS easily. It massively streamlines your front-end development workflow and cuts out a lot of the risks and bugs associated with manually compiling CSS and JS.

Gulp

Webpack

Volterra - Italy 2018

The prefect front end is a seamless combination of design, functionality, and user experience

Front End Performance Optimisation

At the heart of all front end work I do is performance and technical optimisation. As a heavy factor in Google search; page speed and optimisation are key. There are a lot of new front-end technologies that can make a web page lightning quick without impacting user experience and modern browsers support practically all of them.